Captive - FourTris

Twenty-Eight

FEB 7
5 MONTHS, 8 DAYS

Tobias got a new job. He's gone today, and I am alone.

After months of it being him and me all the time, I don't know what to do with myself. I have time and quiet and silence.

My mum had something to do in Seattle today, almost three hours away, so I'm in my room, lying on the plush carpet and staring at the glowing stars I put up years ago. It's hard to know who I was then. When stickers and coloring books ruled the day.

I like my room. It is my Eden. Even though the door is just some fake hollow-core one, it seems like a fortress in here and nothing can get in.

When my phone rings, I almost don't recognize it. Those big red lips make a funny shrill sound. I haven't been home to hear this ring in a long time. I'm always slipping through that door past eleven o'clock, hoping today isn't the day my mum cracks down on my curfew.

I get up and grab it. It must be Tobias. I wonder how his first day is going.

But it is not.

It's Christina.

"Tris?"

I freeze. Her voice is so familiar and so... foreign at the same time. "H-Hi," I say.

"I can't believe you answered."

"Yeah. I'm home today."

"Do you want to do something?"

Her question hangs in the air for a long time. All I can hear is the buzzing in the receiver. I think she might have hung up. "Yes," I finally answer. And it is the truth.

"I'll be there in twenty." And she hangs up before I can change my mind.

Twenty minutes later, we're racing down the back roads in her yellow Mustang. Christina and I used to be completely obsessed with Christina Aguilera, even though she's kind of lame now and it's totally embarrassing. But we like Classic Christina, like "Genie in a Bottle" classic. And we shout it at the top of our lungs as the wind whips through her car.

Even though it's a cold February day, we leave the windows down as the chill tangles our hair and makes our throats sore.

Freedom. That is what I feel today. That is all I feel right now.

Christina and I end up at Red Robin, where we order overpriced fruity drinks and bottomless baskets of fries. We will eat until we want to explode.

"Did you hear that Myra is dating Edward?" Christina holds out the shaker of seasoning salt and I douse my French fries in it and pass it back.

"Eww!"

"I know." She grins, her eyes sparkling.

Christina has always loved gossip, and it's been so long since we've had time to talk like this. "He's, like, totally gross and sweaty." She sticks out her tongue, as if the idea of making out with Edward is the most disgusting thing she's ever heard.

"And huge," I say. I puff up my chest and scrunch my shoulders up. "He doesn't even have a neck. His chin just blends right into his pecs."

Christina's eyes flare and she laughs, this amazing, loud, totally Christina way to laugh.

"And she's, like, tiny. Can you imagine them..." Christina says as she mimes a hip thrust.

"Eww!" I say again, faking a dry heave.

Christina takes a bite of her burger, but it all falls apart in her basket. She doesn't seem to mind, and she picks up the pieces with her fingers and pops them in her mouth. "I guess they hooked up at Winter Formal or something."